BT has gone up in my estimation, the phoneline has now been fixed almost a week after we started having problems. It turns out that the extention has become damaged and was giving feedback which was disrupting broadband. I still don’t like BT but at least they have fixed a problem, we just have to work out how to connect the phone to the phoneline.

I think it is time to change my ISP, BlueYonder looks great. They should be started a 10meg package early next year for £35 a month. that is 10 times faster than my current connection. The 4meg pack is not bad ether, £18 a month.

I have been strugling to get online for the last few days, trying to make the most of my time online before I get disconnected again. My dad rang BT yesterday and they ran a check on the line and said that it wasn’t the line and told him to check the equipment. Which I have just finished doing, after fidling with an old broadband modem linked to my dad’s PC and after a little playing around got it to connect. Since I have no idea what I did and has disconnected my serveral times since I’m lead back to my original conclusion, its a problem with the phone line. I think my dad needs to ring BT again.

Most of the road works that effect me getting into town have no gone (YESSS! No more delays ). I have also gotten my NUS Card and have check that it works by getting two news Wireless PS2 Controlers made by MadCat, been playing with them on GT4. The only problem is that the controler seems to like going to the left and the battery pack gets in the way. I have had a good day, shame I have to do my flash project over the weekend, especially since I have no ideas, bad at animation and have never really used flash before.

Last Friday I got an email telling me that on Monday I would be able to pickup my NUS Card from my campus centre. I couldn’t get there on Monday or yesterday so I went down to day from Edge Lane, through the road works into Liverpool to get my card. I walked to the centre from the bus stop and got there at 1:05pm and was told that reception was closed until 3pm because they were having a break from 1pm. All in all I have wasted £3.60 and 2 hours just to get my NUS Card, and that is before paying for it. This may be a small amount but when you think that I have to go down to the campus centre and the library next-door on a regular basis. Over 3 years that adds up, is it any wonder that students get into so much debt?

When you are making websites you should make sure your XHTML code is valid, if it is valid a browser doesn’t have to work as hard to make the page. Also search engine bots can possess them faster; if it isn’t valid it will take longer for the bot if it can at all. So valid code equals less time to wait for it to render and better rankings on Google, make your code valid today with W3C Markup Validation Service.

You might find this funny but making your website accessible by everyone is set out by law in a number of countries already (W3C Web Accessibility). If someone cannot access the content on your site they can sue you. If you are running a non-profit fan site you really can’t afford to be sued because your website is not accessible.

Although you can’t guarantee that your website will be accessible to everyone you should at least do your best to make sure it works for as many people as possible. The best way to do this is to test your site in a number of browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc) if you have one check your site on your mobile phone or PDA. If you have access to an Apple Mac check it out in Safari. The more browser you check it in the better your website will be.

Also remember to make sure all your images have an alt text or long description and where you can use text instead of images. Make sure you can proof read your content a few days after you have written it, or get someone else to read it. If they can’t read it what chance has someone using a screen reader got of understand your content?

There are a number of tutorials on Accessibility on ILoveJackDaniels.com. There many others as a quick search in Google will show.

Google has made its next move to space with Google Moon, if you have used Google Earth to find you own house you will know the interface already. They have used some images from NASA to make a map of the Moon where Appolo 11 to 17 landed. Make sure you zoom right in, it gets very cheesy.

It’s finally Friday once again, and that means this site is now two weeks old. I haven’t done bad so far keeping it up to date. Some close family friends have just been around, even though we catch up quite a lot, it is nice to see them.

Today I had a lecture “Visual Language” and during the emensly interesting talk I decide I would try to incorperate what I am learning in uni into my blog because that is what I am doing at the moment. It will also make the blog more useful to more people. I will also have a little play with the layout, nothing fance just something that doesn’t look like the default style, I think I will try a drop down menu style navigation system. I am using that system on Gran Turismo Online and it seems to work well in Firefox with just CSS, and ok in Internet Explore but it does need JavaScript to actually make the rollovers change.

I have had a mixed few days, after I posted about my bad bus experince yesterday I went on Gran Trismo 4 and I have finally gotten to 50% which kinda made up for the slow moving traffic. I also had my student loan application accepted so I get very little money to live on for the next year although is better than nothing, I’ll probably need to get a job or something ontop of that to pay my way through the next few years.

Last week I was moaning about spending an hour in the car do a trip that usually takes half an hour. Today I spent 2 hours on the bus getting home, give my a the hour in the car any day.